SGA: The B Team
by eastwood6510
Summary: Remember the episode "This Mortal Coil"? Upset that they threw away a potential endless supply of content at the end of the episode just to wrap things up? Well I do, and this story is a possible scenario that we never got to see on-screen. AU: John and his replicator made team make a go of it, not only for themselves, but for all the humans in the Pegasus Galaxy.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate or any of the characters.

AN: I'm looking for Beta Readers, if anyone is interested, shoot me a message.

 **This story starts right after the end of S4E10 "This Mortal Coil"**

John slowly opened his eyes, trying to drag his consciousness from its hazy surroundings.

"It's about time you woke up."

John recognized that voice, "Ronon? What's going on?"

"Look around, just the usual." replied Ronon very casually.

John finally had the mental acuity he needed to sit up and look around. He was on a bench in an all too familiar jail cell. Teyla, Rodney, Elizabeth, and Ronon were all there with him, Ronon the only one awake before John.

John looked to the bigger man and asked, "How do you always do that? Seriously...It would be helpful to wake up sooner."

Ronon, having been asked that question many times over his life said the same thing he usually did, "You just get used to it."

John stood up and started shaking the others awake. They slowly started coming back to the real world, or what John was hoping was the real world, he shivered at the thought of what he imagined it could be.

After a few minutes of everyone getting the bearings together, Elizabeth spoke, "How'd we get here? The last thing I remember is the jumper taking a hit..."

John nodded his head and replied, "The replicators must've kept us alive. That doesn't bode well with me..."

Rodney groaned when the stray thought came to him, "They must be keeping us alive to put their hands in our head..." Rodney's face paled as another thought struck him, "Oh god, what if they're doing it to us right now?"

Teyla spoke up, "Stop that Rodney, there's no way to know. Might as well not give it a second thought or you'll drive yourself insane thinking about it."

Ronon was lying down on one of the two benches, relaxing as if it was his room on Atlantis, he spoke up, "As much as I love going with the flow, if we're back on the Asuran home world then we're going to need one hell of a plan to get out of here."

Elizabeth added, "Ronon is right, I for one don't want to stay here."

Mckay broke into the conversation quickly, snapping his fingers as he did so, "I think I have an idea...".

After several minutes of very heated arguments mainly between John and Rodney, they finally agreed to a plan.

The team heard footsteps coming down the hallway, they all stood up quickly and faced the front of the cell. Oberoth walked directly up the entrance and nodded to one of his fellow replicators, the cell door powered down and slid open. Oberoth walked inside and said in his usual monotone, "Welcome back Elizabeth, though to be quite honest, I didn't expect to see you again."

Elizabeth was about to make a remark when Mckay stepped forward and started speaking, "Oberoth, I'm prepared to make a deal for my team's freedom," he looked sheepishly between his friends and added, "and my own freedom too, of course."

The other members of the team all looked shocked at what Rodney had said. John was the first to speak, "Rodney, what are you doing?" he started speaking more quietly, "We had a plan remember?".

Oberoth noticed the reactions of all his prisoners and was intrigued. "And how, Dr. Mckay, do you think you can make a deal for everyone's freedom?"

Rodney spoke again before anyone could stop him from answering, "Well I'm pretty sure by now you've figured out what we did the last time we were in the city, you know, making you fight the wraith?" He looked at Oberoth and the replicator gave a short nod. Rodney continued, "Well, I can fix that, if you want. I'll change you guys back to your old selves, that's the deal, I do that you let everyone go." He tried to look as confident as he could.

Oberoth stood still, no emotion showing on his replicator facade of a face. He seemed to be thinking about the deal, many dozens of possible scenarios were being processed by his nanites at the same time. He thought of all the things that could go wrong and all the things that could go right, if he were to have his choice back about fighting or not fighting the wraith. After thousands of risk and reward scenarios played out in his mind in but a few seconds he spoke up.

"Alright Dr. Mckay. We will let your team go, and yourself, after you have disabled the compulsion to make us fight the wraith, but you have to go one step further. You have to take down the safeguards preventing us from altering our own programming. You do that, and we'll even remove all the nanites from your team."

Rodney's face faltered, betraying a look of surprise. "Really?", he asked. "I didn't even think about the nanites still in us..." He looked down and seemed to be pondering this new development.

John took a step toward Rodney and yell whispered, "Rodney, don't you even think of doing it. The replicators' being able to change their programming is probably the worst thing that could happen EVER. Even you told me that."

Rodney glanced up at John, but he had already made up his mind. He looked back to Oberoth and stood up straight, as ramrod as he could. "I'll do it."

Rodney was escorted to the replicator mainframe by Oberoth himself. When they arrived, Rodney walked up to the console in question and started looking about. He turned around and faced Oberoth and said, "To do this I'm going to need one of my own tablets, it has several shortcut methods that will allow me to get this accomplished rapidly. And to be honest, I'm not sure if I could do it without one."

Oberoth stood dispassionately. After a few seconds delay he responded, "One is on its way down from your recovered 'puddle jumper' as we speak."

Rodney again counted his blessings and spoke up again, "Well...good. Yeah, that's good. Uhhh, I also need left alone, I mean, no offense, but I don't think I can work with you...people... staring at me."

Oberoth gave him a very stern look, then spoke with his voice lowered and sounding threatening, "Very well Dr. Mckay, just get it done and you'll have your freedom."

At that, Oberoth left the room and Rodney was left to his own devices. He sighed as he tried to come down from his adrenaline pumping high. He took the time to look around the room and really take it in. He was at a console that looked like a high tech horseshoe. In front of that was the replicator core, colored light blue and orange and standing at around four feet tall.

 _So much trouble from this stinking device_ , he thought.

After several more moments of Rodney's wandering eyes, a new replicator came in, complete with an Atlantis expedition style work tablet. Rodney rubbed his hands together and smiled. The replicator handed him the device without as much as a word and turned around, leaving the room at once.

 _Finally, time to start the plan_ , he thought, happily.

He removed the interface chip from the back of the tablets case and plugged it in quickly to the slot at the console. He then looked up at the two tables behind the replicator core and grinned like a schoolboy who just got his first kiss.

He opened up one branch of pre-programmed batch files he had written as standard in all tablets. This one was heavily protected though and needed two authorization codes to get to, thankfully he had memorized John's earlier in the day. He made dozens of changes in the code quickly, trying to get this part of the job over with as soon as possible. Once he was satisfied with the results he executed the scripts.

Immediately, the two tables behind the core got to work. In mere moments there were two completed replicator bodies on the table. They sat up, rotated their legs to the side of the table and got up.

 _Two down...dozens more to go._

As quickly as he could, Rodney created more and more replicators. As he was working he gave commands to the replicators already standing around staring at him.

"Guard the doors, I don't want any Asurans getting in here, kill them quickly.", he ordered.

The replicators nodded and divided themselves evenly between the two doors. Before Rodney could complete the hundred and fourteenth replicator, an Asuran wandered down to the core room to see what was taking Rodney so long. The Asuran turned the corner into the room and got pulled in bodily by two replicators. As those two held onto him, one per arm, another replicator came up to it and stuck its hand into the head of the Asuran, after a brief second, the Asuran crumbled to the floor like sand.

Rodney heard the commotion and knew his time was up. He knew Oberoth would find out about the death of his 'brother' quickly and needed to get ahead of him. Rodney cancelled the construction of the two replicators currently being built and changed his task to the act of escape, the half-finished replicators falling into a sludge like state. Using his tablet and going back several folders of programs he opened one he wrote earlier just in case he would have an opportunity like this. He executed the script and then unplugged the interface chip from the console and quickly shoved it back in the sleeve of the case.

He yelled, "Alright form up half in front of me and half behind, kill all Asurans we run into on the path, do not stray from that path or you will be left behind."

Rodney and his large group of replicators made their way to the jail cell where the team was being held. They ran into a few surprised Asurans on the way there, all of them were killed quickly. Rodney just snickered to himself thinking; _Not being able to tell your friends what's going on is fun isn't it?_

Rodney's' program made several things possible. First and foremost the Asurans subspace transmitters were pumping out a powerful array of white noise across the subspace band, making the Asurans unable to communicate with each other by means other than speaking. The program also deactivated the planets internal and external sensors, preventing them from being able to locate the team once there were on the move, and also hopefully when they made good their escape.

The large group finally arrived at the jail cell, the replicators killing no less than four Asurans standing guard who were also unaware of what was going on. The team stood up as they heard the sounds of struggle outside their room. Two of the 'good' replicators came into the room followed by Rodney.

John looked at the small gathering and did a small fist pump then exclaimed, "Oh yeah, for the first time ever it's good to see you again! I'm glad the plan worked."

Ronon spoke up with his dose of reality, "We're not off the planet yet… Wait a minute, first time ever?"

Rodney told the nearest replicator to go to the mechanism controlling the locks for the jail cell and deactivate the shield. The replicator stuck his hand in the control panel and the cell door opened on its own, and the team exited quickly.

John spoke up, "Did you find out where our jumper is?"

Rodney responded, "Oh yeah, because I had SOO much time to figure out everything while I was trying to save our lives!"

John turned his head and gave a stern look, "Rodney! Do you know where it is, or don't you?"

Rodney was exasperated and replied, "Oh come on! No I didn't have time for that, Oberoth cut the party short!"

Teyla joined the fray, trying to keep everyone focused like she was so used to doing, "We are still in a hostile environment, I suggest we stop arguing and head to the jumper bay above the gate room."

The team nodded, acknowledging the fact that they weren't out of the woods yet. John started shouting and got the replicators into several large squads. With the cloned humans in the middle of the squads the replicators made their way to the jumper bay.

They made it ten minutes later. They had to fight their way through several Asurans. The Asurans had their energy pistols with them and, while not being able to permanently harm the replicators, insured they were frozen for a few seconds with each shot. That gave the Asurans a small advantage and because of it, the SGA team lost seven of their replicators to the enemy, the Asurans 'melting' them by the hand in the head trick.

Once in the jumper bay, the team ran around to each of the jumpers, looking for the one that they had crashed in on another planet. They didn't find it though and were forced to just grab a few at random.

John and Teyla jumped in one, while Rodney, Ronon, and Elizabeth jumped in another. John took off first and opened the jumper bay doors leading to the stargate. The small army of replicators, following orders, jumped down the thirty foot drop and landed with resounding bangs. They quickly took care of any Asurans in the area.

John lowered his jumper down first, Rodney hovering with his just a dozen feet above the other. John quickly dialed an address to a planet with no known population and flew the jumper through, quickly followed by Rodney's' jumper. As Rodney's' jumper cleared the event horizon on the other side, a veritable nonstop stampede of friendly replicators followed. It took nearly a minute for them all to get through.

Once the gate shut down, John dialed another address and the same event repeated.


	2. Chapter 2

**Review Replies**

 **Anthropos Agnostos:**

Oberoth and the replicators in general are quite arrogant (probably because of the people that made them in the first place). If you recall the first time Oberoth met and spoke to AR-1, he believed that they were basically a cute amusement for the collective but not things to be taken seriously. In that regard, I don't think the Asurans views would change.

Yes, even though Rodney managed to freeze them for a few moments Oberoth was not very impressed. Combine that with the situation cloned AR-1 finds themselves in chapter 1, and I believe it is entirely reasonable that Oberoth would consider the team quite incapable of escaping and therefore wouldn't think twice of leaving Rodney alone.

Anyway, that's just my thoughts.

On an entirely unrelated note:

Did anyone else think that 3 ZPM's overloading would make a bigger explosion than the one that happened at the end of "This Mortal Coil"? I don't remember the episode in particular, but in that episode where a goa'uld spy set the ZPM to overload on Atlantis, Rodney claimed that the explosion would take out a large chunk of the planet….

 **Guest 64:**

Thanks for the review, I saw a lot of possibilities as well, that's why I started this particular story, hope you enjoy the new chapter!

 **AN** : Looking for a few Beta Readers for the story. If you're interested, shoot me a message.

* * *

After two more jumps with the gang in tow, John piloted his jumper slowly to the ground, Rodney landing his a few seconds later. It was a bright, early morning when both crews exited their jumpers and met up near the DHD.

John yelled, "Alright...friends" he said, motioning to the replicators, "form a perimeter. Make four groups of two and have them go North, South, East, and West. Report any sign of trouble or human presence immediately."

He lowered his voice and pointed to the nearest replicator, "You, stay by my side and relay what the others find every ten minutes."

The replicator simply nodded and stayed close, while the others went about their duties.

The team looked at each other and each cracked a smile.

Elizabeth spoke up, "Well, it looks like we escaped." She turned to Rodney and said, "And it's all thanks to our friendly neighborhood genius here."

Rodney perked up and looked smug. John quickly added, "Hey, don't encourage him."

John then got serious, "Well we're in it deep. We're cut off from support, and I really don't think we should go to Atlantis and our...other selves. We'll have to fend for ourselves for a while."

Ronon replied instantly, "Agreed."

Rodney looked confused and said, "What about letting Atlantis at least know we're alive?! I'm sure that I'm worried about my well-being!"

The other members of the group looked at each other, trying to understand what he was saying. Rodney noticed their looks and continued, "Oh come on! You know, the other me, he's probably worried sick about me!"

No one else spoke so John continued as if Rodney hadn't spoken at all, "Alright, our first priority is some shelter and some basic tools, it's time to find some rocks and smash down a few trees. Then we can make a fire for nightfall and forage for food."

Rodney's head snapped up as if he was struck by lightning, "Are you kidding me?" he asked incredulously.

John looked at him pithily and replied, "If you don't want to do the hard labor, that's fine. Just don't come begging to me when you're cold tonight."

Rodney looked confused, "Wait, what? You think I'm upset about the labor? Oh please, I was a boy scout; I'm great at making fires. What I'm saying, caveman, is stop thinking so analogue. Look around us for Pete's sake, we have REPLICATORS."

John did indeed look around, his eyes stopping briefly on replicator after replicator, he stopped after five. "Ok then Rodney, what do you recommend?"

Rodney crossed his arms and formed a superior look on his face, "I say we use them to build everything we need!" He threw his arms to his side and pointed to the closest replicator, "Think about it! This could be the biggest breakthrough since humans from Earth learned how to use the stargate in the first place."

John looked perplexed, "I thought you coded them so they couldn't replicate, Rodney."

"Well, I did, but I can change a few lines here and there. They'll be the perfect workforce, heck, with the proper materials, they could build us another ATLANTIS!"

John had to give it to him, that did sound good, but he wasn't convinced. "Is it safe?"

Rodney guffawed, "Of course it's safe! These things are like really handy dogs! They will do anything we tell them to!"

Teyla looked around discretely and finally spoke up, "Do you think you should be talking about them like that so loudly Rodney? They're all around us..."

Rodney replied, "Oh please, they're nothing more than wrenches. See, watch..." Rodney turned to the replicator near John and asked, "Hey you! Do you feel bad about the way I'm talking about you guys?"

The replicator tilted his head and replied honestly, "Of course not, we were created to help you in any way you need. We are glad to serve the purpose of our creators; it is our reason for being."

Rodney turned and looked at the other humans in his group, "See? What'd I tell ya?"

John and the others, besides Ronon, looked uncomfortable. John spoke up, "I don't know Rodney..."

Elizabeth chipped in, "If this is so safe and amazing, why didn't the other us do it on Atlantis?"

Rodney spoke, "Seriously? You guys barely agreed to use them earlier today and that's when our lives were in danger and no one was coming for us! Everyone is just so set in stone about the idea that replicators are bad that no one would ever consider it under normal circumstances back on Atlantis."

Ronon broke in, "Imagine what we could do with them on our side. Just the one of them at that Wraith research facility probably killed dozens of wraith; the wraith weapons didn't slow it down at all."

The team talked about it at length. Eventually Rodney convinced them to go with his plan for now. Teyla, John, and Elizabeth still had their reservations though, and weren't convinced.

* * *

Rodney finished typing in the changes to the replicator code on the tablet. He then waved over the nearest replicator. "Interface with this machine and download the program I just finished."

The replicator reached out with his hand towards the device. His fingers started to look like the element mercury at room temperature, and then it stuck its 'hand' into the machine. It withdrew its hand just a moment later.

Rodney said, "Alright, now push that update to your brethren on the local network only." he warned.

Rodney looked over towards the gate at the replicators standing guard, they all froze momentarily and then continued on with whatever they were doing. The replicator in front of Rodney looked into his eyes and said, "It is done."

Rodney nodded and said, "Alright then, interface with the puddle jumpers sensors and locate all veins of the metals we need and then take as many of your friends with as you necessary and start mining it."

The replicator turned on its heels and ran to the nearest jumper, it made it there in a fraction of the time a human would have been able to. As Rodney looked on, the replicator exited the jumper a minute later and watched as two dozen other replicators broke off from what they were doing and ran in seemingly all directions.

Rodney smiled to himself and said, "I really am a genius."

* * *

While John and Ronon were off looking for food, the replicators were all busy at their assigned tasks. They were a relentless work force.

Rodney pulled out a hand-held Lantean scanning device and tracked down the nearest group of replicators on mining duty. After nearly twenty minutes of walking, he arrived at the first site to see nothing at first. He checked his scanner again to make sure he was in the right place and sure enough, it showed them virtually on top of Rodney's position.

He looked down and that's when he noticed it, he could see a small line of nanite cells stretching from where a pile of what looked like rock was. From there the line went straight over small clumps of grass and around the stumps of trees to where it just disappeared in the ground. He knelt down at the point where it went underground and he could see the nanite cells passing little pebbles of material from beneath the ground back towards the slowly growing pile of what he realized must be metallic ore.

 _Very interesting!_ He thought.

Standing there, and watching in wonder, half an hour quickly passed. Rodney was startled from his daze when he heard something coming his way, and moving fast. He quickly got behind the nearest tree and waited. Just a dozen seconds past when a blur came running out from behind cover about 15 feet away. Sighing in relief he stepped from behind the tree as he recognized the obvious replicator.

He watched as the replicator dumped a rather large pile of different looking materials from a rough large bowl carved amazingly well from wood close to the original pile. Rodney spoke up, "What are these materials?"

The replicator held the now empty bowl at his side and replied, "I just brought a load of Iron ore from another mining site to compliment the Neutronium being excavated here."

Rodney looked again at the still slowly growing pile of what he now realized was the very valuable Neutronium and asked, "Why are you bringing Iron here?"

The replicator simply pointed as, off to the side, unknown to Rodney, an interesting construct was being, he didn't know any other word to use besides, 'grown' right in front of him. After just a few minutes the construct was complete and it had used about a third of the Iron ore that the replicator had brought. Rodney inspected it quickly; it had the body of a thick snake, at the front it had what looked like 8 or 9 tentacles.

He stared in confusion and started to ask, "What is that thing for?" When the new creation slithered rapidly to the point where the nanite chain disappeared into the ground. Before it got there Rodney noted another one was being built where the first one had just come to life. When the snake like replicator got to its point of egress, its tentacles started spinning rapidly, so quickly in fact that Rodney could only see what now looked like a rounded shield of metal.

The replicator tilted the center of the spinning tentacles to the ground at a 45 degree angle and lunged into the ground. In just moments it had disappeared into the darkness of the earth, creating a perfectly round, smooth slope that descended into the ground.

He didn't know how long he had been standing there when the second snake like replicator slithered by him and made another hole, right next to the first, essentially doubling the width of the tunnel. As he watched, the line of nanite cells that was at first, no more than an inch wide, grew in width until it took up the full borders of the tunnel.

Fascinated he kept watching. Ten minutes past by when he saw much larger rocks and chunks coming up the tunnel. Instead of pebble sized stones, rocks started coming up the tunnel that looked like they easily weighed hundreds of pounds.

As he stood there and watched, replicators would come by the growing pile of Neutronium and shovel large quantities of it on their finely carved wooden transport sleds and then take off in different directions. Numbly, and without much conscious thought, Rodney walked back to the small campfire his team had made.

* * *

John eventually found himself walking alongside Elizabeth through a meadow.

John said, "I hope we don't have to be by ourselves for too long, I already miss Atlantis."

Elizabeth responded, "Our 'original selves' did treat us pretty well back on that planet, I expected them to be much more suspicious and wary."

"Yeah, I'm sure they did plenty of scans with their jumper before they decided to land. I wonder if they picked up on the nanites that are still in our bodies."

Elizabeth frowned slightly, "Even if we do get rid of the nanites, and even if we convince them we're not a security risk, I'm not sure how we would be treated on Atlantis. Don't get me wrong, I think they would be nice to us. I just think that to them, we would always just be 'copies' and not our own persons."

John grunted in disappointment and they continued their leisurely stroll.

* * *

At nightfall everyone except Rodney settled down in the jumpers after their meal, trying to get some sleep. Rodney meanwhile, while constantly snacking on some fruit Ronon had found, was ordering the replicators around, getting them to construct various things. Eventually Rodney told the replicator that he had following him around a rather long list of wants and specifications. Believing it would take them some time to get everything constructed, Rodney told the replicator to wake him up when his room was ready.

* * *

By midnight there was a sprawling single story building of definite Lantean design. Rodney purposely told the replicators to keep it limited to one floor for now because he had a deep seated hate for stairs.

Rodney woke up his team members in the middle of the night. They were all sleeping in a single jumper. He led them out of the ship, everyone walking tiredly except for Ronon. (Ronon didn't believe in being tired and 'slow' while he was awake.)

Because of the teams' tiredness, he showed them directly to the living quarters that Rodney had the replicators build. John tiredly commented that it looked just like his old quarters on Atlantis, minus the Johnny Cash poster.

Rodney offered that if he let one of the replicators stick its hand in his head, they could make him an exact duplicate.

John looked at him like he was crazy and simply said, "No thanks Rodney, the only one with hands going to be in their faces is you if you recommend something so idiotic again."

After Rodney had led everyone to their quarters, he told the replicators to wake everyone up in the event of a gate dial in; he also wanted to be woken up in six hours. He made his way to his own quarters, nearly twice the size of everyone else's of course, and fell asleep on his brand new firm bed.

As the fragile humans slept, the replicators continued on at a frightening pace. Large scale mines were built, and as the collection of high technology demanding metals were collected, more and more complex things were completed. At each mine site and the main complex, transporter booths were installed, some were for personnel, others were industrial; to be used for the transportation of large amounts of material.

Before Rodney was awakened, his long list of tasks was complete. Their construction jobs done for the moment, all the replicators returned to the default behavior of defense, protecting their human creators.

 **AN** : Looking for a few Beta Readers for the story. If you're interested, shoot me a message.


	3. Chapter 3

**Review Replies:**

 **Noventer:**

Now now, no one is supposed to notice the foreshadowing this early...

* * *

John awoke under a silky smooth sheet. He stretched lazily for a moment, then jumped out of bed like he was under attack. "What the hell?" He looked around his surroundings for a few moments, then it all started coming back to him, he remembered being led here in a sleep induced stupor. "Oh yeah..."

He exited his room, immediately noticing the two guards at his door. Neither moved a fraction of an inch at his sudden arrival.

 _Creepy_ , he thought.

He started walking around, taking in the sights, while also trying to figure out where everything was. He spent several minutes walking around aimlessly until he gave up looking for an exit. He walked up to a nearby replicator and asked to be shown to the exit nearest the stargate.

After another few minutes of walking, John and the replicator stepped out into the bright early morning sun. John looked around, trying to understand all the changes that had taken place in so short a time. He walked a dozen meters and started a short walk up a small hill that overlooked the gate. At the top he looked down and viewed a dozen replicators still in the same guard formation as they were when he went to sleep in the jumper.

 _Crazy little robots_ , he thought.

He tore his gaze from the replicators at the gate and looked all around the horizon. In a few directions he saw large, busy mining sites with several large, odd looking robots moving in and out of holes in the ground. John whistled, _WOW, these sucker's sure can build..._

He turned around and motioned for the replicator to follow him. As he walked down the hill he asked, "So, any contact with any other sentient beings while we were sleeping?"

The replicator simply responded, "No."

John nodded and mulled that over, thanking whatever higher power who was looking out for them for the good news. "Alright then, tell me what you built for us here, just the highlights."

"We have followed the instructions laid out for us by Dr. Rodney Mckay. The following is what we have constructed: a mine for each reachable metal vein discovered in a one hundred mile radius, twenty personal bedrooms, a fully outfitted science lab, a gate control room identical to Atlantis, long range sensors, a neural interface chair, a 'puddle jumper' bay minus the ships, several hundred 'drones', and a dozen small cold fusion reactors to power the various constructs. Note that the reactors are insufficient to power the chair to fire the drones."

Half way through the replicators list John had stopped walking and just stared at the replicator. When the speech was done, John still stood there internally questioning if this was really happening. He managed to stammer, "Really?"

The replicator rotated his head to look at John, nodded and said, "Yes."

John said, "Take me to the control room."

* * *

Five hours later, everyone was gathered together in a small mess hall busily stuffing themselves with the berries and fruit that Ronon and John had gathered the day before.

Ronon finished eating before everyone else as he was long accustomed to shoveling food in his mouth while he had the opportunity. He spoke up, "So, what's next?"

Rodney put his two cents in the fastest, "Well I don't know about you guys, but I say we get a real food supply set up as quickly as possible." he said, while looking strangely at the fruit in front of him. "This just isn't...right. No fruit should taste like chicken." He said shaking his head.

Elizabeth smiled, "I agree with Rodney, we need a more diverse selection of food. It also wouldn't hurt to move the gate inside our complex and get it protected by a shield iris."

Rodney, with a piece of food in his mouth, managed to say, "I did that last night, the replicators should be done moving the gate by now."

Ronon spoke up, not entirely satisfied with the answers to his original question, "So we get food and make sure we're safe here...then what? I want to kill some wraith."

John grunted and said, "Chewie's right. We need to keep helping people. Hell, it's the reason I'm in this galaxy in the first place."

Everyone around the table nodded their agreement. Elizabeth spoke up, "Ok, so we've got a long term goal, how are we going to accomplish it?"

John spoke first, "Well, we have a small army of replicators. We can do a lot of damage with their help." Here he turned his head to look at Rodney who was busily chowing down on berries and asked, "Can you make more replicators or is what we have all we're going to get?"

Rodney held his finger up, only increasing his chewing speed slightly, then answered, with his mouth still slightly full, "I can have the replicators make some more replicator creation tables. Then we will be able to make as many as we need."

John nodded his head and was going to speak when Elizabeth spoke first, "Can we trust them though? Won't the Asurans be able to take them over like they did to Niam?"

Rodney replied, now without food in his mouth, "Huh uh. No way, these are completely separate from the Asurans."

Elizabeth just stared at Rodney, one eyebrow raised, not saying anything.

Rodney held under the pressure….for 5 whole seconds before he squeakily replied, "Well, uh.. I don't think so. I mean, I don't see how they could!"

Elizabeth shook her head, "I don't think we should make any more at the moment. They are too big of a security risk."

John now, "Okay, so we don't take them on missions until we can make sure that they can't be turned. What does that leave us? We have a few ancient stunners which are nice and all, but we're going to need more firepower."

Ronon nodded, saying nothing.

Rodney perked up at a thought he got, "Wait, didn't I tell you how I was going to fix that?"

Everyone around the table looked at him, John spoke first, "No, please, tell us this wonderful plan."

"I thought of a way to get basically anything we need. It helps that we have the replicators, because we can't set it up without them."

John just stared at Rodney and spoke a little angrily, "Well? Are you going to tell us your brilliant idea or not?"

Rodney looked hurt and said, "Of course! Anyway, I'm sure we're all familiar with the way the replicators construct things right? Right, well I'll tell you anyway. They take the molecules in question and literally connect them together at the molecular level to form any shape or structure they want. So, with that capability, I plan to have the replicators construct a sort of super 3D printer. It'll be much faster than those of Earth origin, and it will be able to create vastly more complex items."

Ronon questioned, "Could it make another of my pistols?"

Rodney looked at him, "Definitely, no doubt. But...well, you'll need a working module or blueprint to be able to make it. That's the drawback, unless it's already in the ancient database then it will have to be scanned by a machine here on the molecular level before it can be constructed."

Elizabeth said, "So, we could construct anything the Ancient's could make?"

Rodney replied, "Yeah, and anything else we scan into the database. It's the perfect constructor. I also have an idea to make it work by speech access to get it to design new things that aren't in the database...but I have a lot of work to do before that will be ready."

Everyone looked at each other, back and forth multiple times, then as one they all looked at Rodney and forcefully said, "Then do it!"

* * *

As Rodney worked on his super 3D printer, Elizabeth and John were in the control room trying to get used to the fact that it looked identical to the one in Atlantis. Ronon and Teyla were in a newly built training room, sparring with the dual Athosian style wooden clubs that Ronon had spent his time carving.

Elizabeth walked over to John and asked, "So how's the long range sensors looking? Any contacts?"

"Negative, but thankfully Atlantis is on our sensors so we'll be able to see if they get into any trouble."

Elizabeth pondered that for a moment then said, "That means that any ship that heads to us would be visible to them too, correct?"

John nodded, "That's right."

Elizabeth thought, _Good, we can use that_.

Later in the day John found Ronon, in the gym room of course, and asked, "I'm getting really bored just sitting around, what about you?"

Ronon responded quickly, "I thought you'd never ask. Let's go kill something."

John raised his arms slightly, "First, we need a plan. When you were a runner, what did you use for weapons before you got that awesome gun of yours?"

Ronon thought for a second and replied, "Well, at first I used weapons from supply depots on Setada, but the wraith eventually caught on to that and kept bringing larger and larger forces to Setada whenever I went back for resupply. Eventually it was just too much hassle. At that point I just used whatever I could make, sticks, spears, rocks, and a whole lot of traps."

John seemed to mull this over. "Those weapons you used on Setada when you were made a runner again were pretty effective. Are there any supply depots still intact?"

Ronon nodded and answered, "Yeah, there's several left, nearly untouched."

"Great, get prepared, we're going to get armed."

Ronon, John, and Teyla met up with Rodney in the middle of a seemingly useless hallway.

John being the leader spoke up, "Rodney, get ready, we're going to Setada to get some weapons and explosives."

He looked at John with a confused look, "What, right now? I'm a little busy at the moment!"

John just grabbed Rodney's arm, pulling him away from a console on the wall, "It can wait, you are a vital member of my team and we're going on a mission."

"But, but, I'm almost done, give me five or ten hours, tops."

"Don't make me find some citrus."

In the control room, John nodded at Elizabeth as his team walked by her on the way to the Jumper bay. John dialed the gate and brought the jumper down through the ceiling. As the gate's puddle formed, Elizabeth spoke over the radio to John in the chair of the jumper, "Good luck and don't get caught, there won't be any rescue coming."

John smiled and replied, "What, you wouldn't lead a one woman rescue op to save us?"

She replied with the hint of humor, "Not a chance."

As soon as the jumper went through the gate, Elizabeth whispered, "Godspeed."

* * *

Several short seconds later, the jumper exited the gate on Sateda. John flew the jumper higher and cloaked it as soon as possible. While doing a quick scan of the city for life signs Teyla asked a question, "I thought the stargate was destroyed when Ronon was made into a runner again last year?"

John nodded and replied, "It was. I requested the Daedalus to replace it with a salvaged space gate a few months after that though. I thought it would be good to have it back on the gate network."

Teyla thought for a second, "Well, that decision is certainly helping us now."

Rodney spoke up from the back of the jumper, "Picking up any life signs?"

"Nothing yet. It looks all clear. Ronon, where is the easiest accessible weapons depot?"

"Several blocks south of the stargate. Look for a high-rise building with a large antenna on the roof."

John turned the jumper around and headed in the indicated direction, "How's it going back there Rodney?"

Rodney was busy tapping at a few control crystals in the tray that folded down from the top of jumper. "I should have it up and running by the time you're done loading everything in here. The extra parts I had the replicators make are really making this a lot simpler."

John shook his head, "Don't pat yourself on the back until the job is done Rodney!" Here he gave a sly look and smile to Teyla and said, "Personally, I don't think you can do it."

Rodney sounded indignant, "What? Like saving your life from the replicators isn't enough for you to have some faith in me?"

Any further Rodney bashing was halted when Ronon saw the building in question, he stood up and pointed out the front window, "There, to the east a little."

"I see it." John said as he turned the jumper in that direction.

John lowered the jumper in front of the building, making sure to keep the jumpers back door facing the side of the building that Ronon indicated there was a loading bay. There was a slight jolt as the jumper touched down and then the rear ramp was lowered.

Ronon lead John and Teyla out of the jumper and towards a large metal door.

John shook his head, "This loading door looks like it could've been made in Pittsburg."

Ronon looked at him confused but John just said, "Never mind, let's get this over with."

Ronon walked to the right side of the large door and noticed a rather large padlock on the handle. Looking around on the ground he found a metal pipe about 20 feet away. He shoved the pipe in between the locking mechanism and the pad and levered down as hard as he could.

Five seconds later Ronon was opening the door, sliding it to the left.

John spoke up again, "Ah, never mind. On earth, loading bay doors go up, not left."

Ronon shook his head and walked in without a word, John and Teyla following behind a moment later.

The bright light from the sun filtered into the now open depot and the team looked around at the seemingly endless piles of boxes.

John opened up the nearest crate and let out a low long whistle, "Now this is what I'm talking about!"

 **AN** : Looking for a few beta readers. If you're interested, shoot me a message.


	4. Chapter 4

**Armament**

Teyla walked over to him and looked around his shoulder, "Those look like grenades."

John just smiled and said, "I sure hope they are. Chewie, how powerful are these things?"

Ronon of course knew the devices in question and answered while moving several crates out the now open door, "Depends on the grenade you're talking about. The ones with red circles in the middle are mainly incendiary, for burning things down and creating a lot of noise. The ones with green circles are what you would call a fragmentation grenade, they have a kill radius of about 8 meters."

John did a small fist pump and closed the lid of the container. He picked it up and motioned for Teyla to grab another one. They walked the small distance to the jumper and set them down carefully.

As John set down his box he asked, "How's it going Rodney?"

Rodney not looking away from the Lantean computer pad as he mumbled without thinking, "Yeah, yeah, you too."

John had a confused look on his face but then decided to drop it. "Whatever, just get it done. I don't want to have to take ten trips to get all this stuff."

Teyla and John walked back into the depot as Ronon was pushing a small loading cart with six medium containers on it back towards the jumper.

"Any more of those around?" John asked.

Ronon replied, "On the left side, against the wall."

John and Teyla both grabbed a cart of their own and filled them up with containers, not bothering to check what was inside them first.

The loading continued for another few minutes until the back of the jumper was full. After that, they just unloaded the containers all around the sides of the jumper.

Half an hour later about half of the depot was empty and the loading bay area was filled with stacks of containers.

John spoke up, "Now would be a good time to be done Rodney."

"It'll be another ten minutes at least, but you can go ahead and start tagging everything. Remember, just tag the bottom container, the beam will do the rest."

"If you say so." John replied, not really sure this was going to work.

He walked out the back of the jumper and handed a small device to Teyla and Ronon. "He said to tag the bottom most container."

They nodded, then the trio all went separate ways, placing the device firmly against the side of containers and pressing a button.

When they were done, they entered the jumper just as Rondey said, "Annnnndddd that should do it. Everything set outside?"

Getting confirmation from everyone he spoke again, "Okay, here goes nothing."

He pressed a few buttons and then there was a sound of energy building up. Right when Teyla started looking worried there was a bright flash of light that covered the area around the jumper, starting at the ground and rising quickly.

When the teams eyes' readjusted they looked around and discovered that Rodney had succeeded yet again, all the containers were gone.

John, still looking around spoke up, "Good job Rodney, how much more can we store?"

Rodney pressed a few buttons and analyzed what he was seeing, "What we have stored already is taking up about 10% of the buffer. In other words, a lot more." he said smugly.

John smiled wide and hitched his thumb over his shoulder, back towards the depot. "Good, and now that you've got it working, you can help us load up the next batch."

Rodney's shoulders slumped, he set down the pad and shuffled towards the depot.

* * *

Several days later John found himself in the control room after just finishing a conversation with Elizabeth.

John spoke to one of the guard replicators in the control room, "Get 15 replicators up here that aren't currently doing anything."

It nodded, not saying a word, and within fifteen seconds replicators started jogging into the control room.

Elizabeth locked eyes with John and nodded her head, he then started dialing the gate.

By the time that the gate activated and the puddle stabilized, all the requested replicators had arrived. John waved a hand and they followed him down to the embarkation room.

"Alright, listen up! We're going to be sending you guys on recon missions, one each to a planet. I want you to look for signs of the Wraith but do not engage them unless you have to. The intelligence is more important that killing a few wraith. Do a detailed scan of the areas around the gate and then start your patrol, report back within 12 hours. Keep an eye out for energy signatures of any kind." He paused a brief moment and said, "Oh, and evade detection. We don't want anyone to know about us just yet." He pointed to the replicator nearest the gate, "You, go on through."

The replicator turned around without a word and stepped through the stargate, it shutdown a second afterwards.

John looked up to the control room and said, "Dial the next one."

* * *

The replicator exited the gate and crouched down next to the DHD. It observed its surroundings with its advanced senses and built in life-signs detector. Not finding anything in the immediate vicinity, it ran directly through the now powered down stargate and entered a patch of trees. It completed a cautious circuit around the gate at a distance of about 500 feet.

Finding nothing, it then followed a small dirt path away from the stargate for a quarter mile. The path exited a tree line that opened up into a large clearing. In the middle of the clearing was the remains of a village that looked like it had been destroyed from orbit. The replicator stayed inside the tree line for 10 minutes, watching for any signs of movement or habitation.

Detecting nothing for the moment it sprinted into the outskirts of the village. Houses and buildings were blown apart, several still on fire. There were craters in the ground, blackened and large. The replicator found human bodies in various states of injury, but found none alive.

It continued searching the village for several hours, then it headed back to the stargate.

* * *

John was in the control room leaning back in a chair with his feet up on a control console. He was throwing a small rock in the air and catching it, bored out of his mind. He had just tossed the rock nearly up to the ceiling when the stargate activated. He sat up quickly, temporarily forgetting what he had just done. As he was reaching forward to activate the shield around the gate the rock came back down and hit him on the top of his head.

"Owwwwwww." He hit the shield control with his left hand and used his right hand to massage his head where the rock hit him. The shield deactivated on it's own and a replicator stepped through it. It looked up and saw John in the control room and then sprinted up to him.

John, still rubbing his head, stood up and said, "Report."

"There was no sign of activity around the gate. I followed a path to the east and found a human village, it was destroyed recently via orbital weapons fire. There were no survivors."

John looked surprised and asked, "How many dead?"

"I couldn't determine an exact number, but at least a thousand."

John, now surprised and angry said, "Why the hell would the wraith destroy the village?"

"It wasn't the wraith. The buildings that weren't destroyed completely had holes through the walls and roof. It appears to have been caused from what you call 'drones'."

John's eyebrows rose in surprise, "Are you sure about that?"

The replicator nodded, "Positive, the readings I took of the residual radiation confirms it."

* * *

"It's the second report we've got and I have a feeling they aren't going to stop. Whatever is happening, we need to do something about it."

Elizabeth nodded, "I agree, but first we need to find out who is responsible. Who do we know that uses drones?"

John thought a few moments, "The travelers have an Aurora class ship so they could've done it, though I don't see why they would. That only leaves one other group, it's got to be the Asurans."

"I agree but I still don't see why they would do it."

John angrily yelled, "It doesn't matter why! We just have to stop them!"

"I'm all for that John, but how are we going to do that? We don't exactly have any super-weapons laying around."

John threw his hands in the air in disgust, "I know, I know! I just can't stand around and wait for more people to die." John walked over to the replicator guard in the control room and said, "Bring me a subspace transmitter and dial the gate to an uninhabited world close to Atlantis."

He walked back into Dr. Weir's office and she asked, "Have a plan do you?"

"No, not yet, but I need to let Atlantis know what is going on, maybe they can do something about it."

"Are you sure that's wise? I didn't think we wanted Atlantis to know we were still around yet?"

John shook his head, "I'm not exactly going to call them up and tell them what we've been doing these last few weeks. I'm just going to send a warning."

"Alright. Well, be careful John."

John walked through the control room and down the stairs. A replicator walked up to him and handed him a somewhat bulky ancient tablet. He took it without comment and started walking to the gate. Before he got there, 4 replicators surrounded him in a box pattern and they all went through the gate together.

They walked through the other side on a hot, sandy world. This systems sun was just starting to come up which meant that it was going to get even hotter soon. John walked to the DHD while the replicators fanned out and formed a perimeter.

John quickly typed out a message on the tablet and selected a frequency he hoped the wraith wouldn't be monitoring. He finished up the message settings and fired it off into the void. He dialed the gate back to their base and told the nearest replicator. "Make a recording device over on that rock facing the gate." he pointed off to the left of the gate, "Hopefully we'll be able to tell if Atlantis got the message this way. If they do they'll probably send a team to investigate."

The replicator reached the rock and bent down. He put his palm against the rock for a few moments and then removed it and walked back into formation. John hoped that meant the replicator did its assigned task. Shaking his head he headed back to the gate with his guardians in tow.

* * *

While Sheppard was briefing Elizabeth on the reports of destroyed human settlements, Rodney was busy working on the interface of his super machine. Finally, he thought he was ready for a test. "Computer, how much of the common elements do we have available at the moment?"

The computer, which was a special setup designed by Rodney to make it easy to construct and order things, replied, "We have several tons of the following readily available: Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Hydrogen, Fluorine, Sodium, Magnesium. -"

Rodney had heard enough and interrupted, "Very well, that will do. Wait a second, how did we get the gases?"

The partial replicator AI replied, "The replicators built a few refinement facilities that pull in the breathable atmosphere and separate the different elements into specialized containers several dozen feet underground."

Rodney nodded and simply said, "Oh." then looked through the list of available items ready to be made from the Ancient database (that the nanites had in their memory from the Asuran homeworld's database) and decided to do a test. "Computer, please produce a batch set of eight personal shield devices."

"Accepted. Construction beginning. Completion of all items in ten minutes."

Rodney smiled broadly and thought, _Hell yes!_

The ten minutes passed quickly for Rodney, as he was busy searching through the database for all the cool things he ever wanted. A large list began to form.

Rodney looked up at the sound of a loud, but calm tone. To his right a panel slid up and out extended a small tray that held the eight shield devices he had ordered. Rodney smiled and excitedly rubbed his hands together. He grabbed the tray and took off running towards the control room.

When he got there he excitedly ran up the stairs to the control room that was identical to the one on Atlantis. Elizabeth and John saw him quickly approaching and shared a confused glance at each other.

John spoke up as Rodney cleared the line of sight to him, "I don't think I've seen you move that fast since the time I chased you with that citrus back on Atlantis."

Rodney closed the distance easily, with just a slight case of heavy breathing, "Oh ha ha, very funny. But even you can't make me feel bad now, look at these!" He lowered the tray and extended them to the duo. He grinned broadly and smugly as he saw on their faces a look of surprise. "See? What did I tell ya? The 'fabricator', that's what I'm calling it by the way, made these in ten minutes flat, no problem."

Elizabeth picked one up, looking at it closely and said, "Wow Rodney, these will be incredibly helpful."

John, not one to stroke Rodney's ego too much, spoke up, "I didn't think that idea of yours would actually work." He picked one up from the tray and stuck it to his chest. The device sat there easily. With a thought from John, the device went from a deep green color to a bright, almost glowing green. A small flicker surrounded John as he let out a low whistle, "Hey look, it actually functions too! You may have outdone yourself on this one."

Elizabeth walked over to a nearby console and quickly pressed a button, then spoke, "Ronon, Teyla, please come to the control room. We have some planning to do."

When everyone had gathered in the conference room, John caught them up on the attacks on human settlements.

Rodney, quite agitated and upset stammered, "What do you mean you sent a message to Atlantis? They're probably going to send a team to check it out!"

John looked at him like he was stating the obvious, "I know that Rodney! I think the risk of discovery is worth it though, we have to get a head start on this if we're going to prevent more deaths and Atlantis needs to know what's going on if they don't already."

Teyla agreed calmly, "I agree Colonel, we need to do something about this threat, and quickly."

John nodded, "We need a plan."

AN: Still looking for a few beta-readers. If you're interested, shoot me a message.

Also, review if you like it and comment about what you'd like to see in the future!


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